


Treasures

by rannadylin



Series: Watcher Violet [14]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Childhood Memories, Engaged Couple, F/M, Unrequited Crush, orlans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 17:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rannadylin/pseuds/rannadylin
Summary: (A scene to end up near the end of Soul & Shield...eventually, but Rannatober 2019 brings you this early version of it... ;-D) Lottie, newly engaged to Anselm, confesses a childhood secret.





	Treasures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queen_scribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_scribbles/gifts).

> Requested by Queen from the Sententiae Latinae prompt "Facta Non Verba"...I'm not sure it ended up really sticking to the prompt as much as I thought it would, but this is a scene I've had planned (for nearly as long as Lottie has had that crush XD) for near the end of Soul & Shield, after these two finally get together officially! Someday, we may hope, I'll actually write all the parts up to that point so this can find its place in the whole novel...

A delighted gasp drew Anselm’s attention from across the clutter of the tower room they were soon to share as newlyweds, and he looked up to see Lottie scaling a bookshelf on which she was supposed to be arranging the latest crate of books.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, smirking as she reached the top and started poking at a panel in the ceiling.

“Yes!” she called over her shoulder, found whatever hidden latch she was looking for, swung the panel out of the way, poked her head up through it, then leaned back down into the room, beaming at him. “I just remembered something I want to show you. But you have to come with me.”

“What?” Ears flicked as he squinted up at the darkness beyond her. “In there?”

She grinned. “Secret passage.”

“Lottie, I’m pretty sure that’s just the attic.”

“Well, yes. But it made a very good secret passage when I was growing up.”

“You used to play in the attic over the newlywed tower?”

She sat cross-legged on the top shelf and ticked off points on her fingers. “First, it wasn’t the newlywed tower till Gar got married. Second, _this_ attic isn’t the part I want to show you.” Her fur ruffled and her smile lost some of its intensity as she went on. “It’s...well, perhaps it’s silly. But…I would like to share it with you, all the same.”

“Hm.” He considered the height of the bookcase. He considered the vulnerable, wide-eyed look of his fiancée now tugging at her braids as she watched him, and the ceiling did not seem quite so far off as it had before. “Well...then I would love to see it.”

She brightened and went into action, leaning down to help him climb the shelves to join her. Anselm was fit enough for the fieldwork of his profession, physically capable of the climb, but as the floor fell farther and farther behind, he had to keep his eyes fixed on his apparently fearless bride-to-be. A distant part of his mind made a note to worry later about the possibility of offspring inheriting their mother’s recklessness, as he swung himself up into the attic after her. But then, as they crawled away from the open panel, they were merely in a new room -- dustier and darker than the chamber below, but back on solid ground.

“All right,” Anselm said. “So this is --”

But Lottie was already crawling away, along the curved wall of the tower near which the panel opened, towards a window rather in need of dusting.

“...ah,” he finished. “You did mention a secret passage.”

“Maybe it doesn’t count, really,” she said, shoving at the neglected window till it finally swung open with a creak of indignation. “I mean, secret passages are probably supposed to be entirely inside a house, right? Between the walls and all that. But I could come and go this way without going through the common room, so it seemed like a secret passage to me.”

Anselm amended his mental note to include future worries about offspring inheriting their mother’s resourcefulness in the matter of sneaking out, too. “Where exactly are we going, Lottie?” he asked, inching closer to the window but not so close as to look out and down.

But she had already climbed out the window ahead of him, so out the window he must look for the answer to that question. To his relief, he saw not a drop to the ground, but a stretch of the manor roof that joined this tower to the next -- to the tower that had contained Lottie’s own bedroom, growing up. Already she was scurrying across the roof to a window opposite the one to whose frame he now clung. That one seemed to open less reluctantly than the first, and she climbed inside as if it were any other door.

Still he hesitated, till her head poked back out over the roof, braids dangling and smile bright. “This way!” she pointed out. “Are you coming?”

He had to stop and think about that. Lottie made it look so easy, dancing across roofs, but it _was_ a long way down (oh, gods, and now he’d gone and looked down the angle of the roof, down where gravity would take over if he lost his footing and -- )

“Anselm?” The note of worry in her voice snapped him back to the moment and his eyes up to meet hers, in which realization was dawning. “Oh. Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’ll -- should I come back over? Stay put, I’ll be right there.”

“No,” he said before he could think too much and disappoint her. “No, you stay. I can do this.”

And he did. Somehow, locking eyes with Lottie as she stretched a hand and smile in encouragement towards him, maybe locking souls a bit too, he made it out the window. One step after another, he made it across the roof. Soon, blessedly so, he was at the second window and she reached to haul him inside, tumbling over into another dark and dusty attic. They landed in a tangle of limbs and her skirt he’d gotten a foot caught on squeezing past her through the window and giggles of fear relieved and impulsive kisses as she found him in the dark.

“Mm,” he murmured as the kissing slowed. “This is what you wanted to show me? We could find saner places to kiss, you know.”

She giggled again. “I’m sure we will. But I’ve dreamed of kissing you in _my attic_ for a long time, and I intend to enjoy the moment.”

“Mm,” he murmured again, enjoying the moment very much himself. Then he thought on what she had said, and pulled back to ask, “For a long time?”

“Well…” She untangled herself from their embrace and sat up. In the light from the window, he could just see her ears flutter and her smile turn bashful. “Mostly in recent weeks, of course. It was such a silly crush, so long as you were still planning to marry Violet. I tried not to think of it _too_ much.” She laughed, merry at her own expense: “I told myself so many times it was just one of those weird childhood crushes I’d grow out of. Only I’ve grown into it instead!”

“A rarity,” he smiled, sitting up as well. “No surprise there. You’re a rarity yourself, darling.”

She beamed and leaned in to kiss him again. “Now,” she said, “come see my treasures!”

She led him across the cramped space to a wall lined with...not shelves, technically. Nothing so sturdy and specifically made with shelves in mind as the bookcases elsewhere in the house. Mostly it consisted of boards balanced on crates, supplemented with the occasional half-broken old chair. Every surface was cluttered with a motley assortment of oddities: small, colorful stones; broken pottery; feathers; buttons. “By ‘treasures’,” Anselm said, “I rather expected you meant ‘books’.”

“Books don’t belong in an attic,” she said. “Obviously I’ve collected a few of those too, but I keep them in easy reach. These are just...things that caught my fancy when I was little. Including this.” She picked up one of the curios and turned to him, holding it out with a sly smile. “You might recognize it.”

He looked at her curiously and then at the thing she had handed him. A pen -- an old fountain-pen, but still in decent condition, on first glance. On second glance he saw the deep red wood from which it was carved, polished to a shine underneath the attic’s dust, and the letters inlaid in gold on one side: _AC._ On third glance he caught on.

“I don’t recall how old I was,” she explained. “You might’ve been still -- well, it was probably before Violet called it off; after that we didn’t see you as often. So I was pretty young. You loaned me a pen for some reason. I may have...forgotten to ever return it.” He looked up again to see her grinning wide. “A silly little token, in retrospect. But, there it is. It reminded me of you, so it was a treasure.”

“Lottie…” He turned the pen over in his hands, remembering nothing of that long-ago loan. “I...don’t know what you saw in me then. I’m sure I behaved no better to the rest of you than I did to Violet.”

“Oh, I know.” She took his hand, still gripping the pen, between both of hers. “I was too little to understand that then. You were a charming, fascinating mystery and completely beyond my grasp; I suppose that was all that mattered.” Somehow, despite the pen between their hands, her fingers laced with his. “What _really_ matters is what I see in you now.”

As he hesitated to ask just what that was, a creak of hinges near her treasure-shelves drew their attention. A trapdoor like that back in the newlywed chamber swung open and Xipil climbed up into the attic, blinking in the darkness till he spotted his twin. “Lottie?” he said. “Audie’s looking for you.”

“I’ll be right there!” she answered. But first she kissed her fiancé goodbye, whispering, “You can have the pen back now, if you like. Better that than leaving it up here with the baubles. Besides, now we can share it.” And with a wink she turned and scurried down into her old room below.

Anselm stood staring after her, running his thumb over his initials on the pen, till he took note of Lottie’s brother still sitting there on the edge of the trapdoor, watching him. 

Xipil nodded with a crooked grin. “Happiest I’ve ever seen her,” he said. And then, having given his blessing as briefly as possible, he too descended into the habitable parts of the house. But Anselm sat there a while longer, pondering the treasures Lottie had once gathered, the things that had made her happy -- pondering his place among them. At last, tucking the pen into his pocket, he left the attic behind to join the rest of the family.


End file.
